For the dverse prompt—heredity.
Looking from mirror to you,
leafing through photo albums
looking from you to them
and the way the dead laughed,
I wonder at all those ancients,
whose faces left no image,
with their wild hair and their gold torcs,
who gazed in awe at the standing stones of Inishowen
and how I would have known them in a thousand,
from the way they laughed,
lop-sided and silent.
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Jane Dougherty Writes 
Damn, woman. You’re SO good.
I love your birds and foxes, I love your trees and skies…but this, this is sth that really resonates with me.
P.S. Free verse suits you perfectly. I find it liberating. To quote great Robert Frost – it’s like playing tennis without a net.
Thank you! Free verse is a lot easier to write than formal verse in the sense that it’s harder to say what you want in verse that has to stick to a rhyme and a rhythm. That’s why I write it. Discipline 🙂
Although the words don’t rhyme, the rhythm is there, which makes them equally melodious.
A good student you are, indeed.
Thanks 🙂 I do like a bit of rhythm, it’s true, and very hard to write without it.
To rhyme or not to rhyme….whatever the case, you’re always rhythmic.
I try me best to keep on dancing 🙂
There’s a lot to be said for keeping photos in albums; they’re like old-fashioned bibles, revered and sacred. My nan had a huge bible with family photos in – my mum threw it away because she found silverfish in it.
There’s also an eerie feel to the lines
‘leafing through photo albums
looking from you to them
and the way the dead laughed’
and I love the way you go further back in time in the lines:
‘I wonder at all those ancients,
whose faces left no image
…
and how I would have known them in a thousand,
from the way they laughed,
lop-sided and silent’.A fab ending, Jane!
Thanks Kim. It’s something that I often wonder about—given how we set so much store by the physical—how do we ‘know’ all those ancestors who have left no images of themselves? I would love to know what Niall of the Nine Hostages looked like and if he had the same crooked smile as my son and my dad.
Oh how I would love to have that laugh instead of the stern looks I see,
There is only one of my ancestors who looks stern in photos—my great-grandma Cahalin. She not only didn’t smile in photos, she was a stern, traditionalist who gave her daughter, my grandma a hard time. All the others seem to be always having a high old time 🙂
It is amazing how you can see the semblance of your smile repeated through the years past. That is a sure and binding sign of your heritage
Just as much as any other characteristic. DNA is wonderful!
Like itsy bitsy fingerprints
🙂
That ending is just breathtaking.
Thank you, Carol. I imagine that laugh going back through the centuries and it makes the distant past seem closer.
I love the last three lines. 🙂
Thanks Willow 🙂
The lop-sided laugh is a wonderful inheritance…does make us wonder about our ancient ancestors, how far back could we see the traits?
I wonder that too, Lynn. Like I wonder what made our ancestors laugh. Was it over the same things?
I like to think humans have always laughed at themselves, each other, and the world 😀
I think you’re probably right 🙂
lop-sided laugh … adore that.
Thanks Margaret 🙂
I love Irish family history (as I am as Sullivan). Where we came from is so important…in spite of crooked grins, wild hair.😊
Are you from Kerry? Lovely bit of the world 🙂
Cork
Munster anyway 🙂
Reblogged this on Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung – Aus und über Eslarn, sowie die bayerisch-tschechische Region!.
Thank you!
Great! And it shows to us: We do not have a endless life, but we have a endless love!
Thank you! I think this is what is meant by the chain of life.
I love this march through the ages–ancestry in lop-sided laughs. Wouldn’t it be cool to meet them?
I’d certainly love to meet them!
We all seem to be latching onto the laugh–one of our better traits. It’s certainly one thing that I remember vividly about my mother. And I do wonder what trail led it to her, as her parents were quite sober. (K)
Her grandparents, a distant grandparent? It’s maybe a gene that is easily suppressed by nurture.
It may be. Life was not easy for my mother’s family. Their way of coping was to be religious in the Protestant sin-and-deprivation mode.
I find that such a sad aspect of religion, that is takes all the pleasure out of life. Just so we can have fun when we’re dead—fun as in singing hymns day in day out.
I know. Heaven sounds like a dreadful place to me.
Since Catholic doctrine is a bit hazy on whether hell exists at all, I think I’m going to opt to stay in that eternal waiting room of Purgatory until God invents a better place to go.
Yes, definitely preferable.
🙂
Nicely done Jane. The laugh is a very identifying feature in a family. I love the idea of being able to identify your ancestors by their lop-sided and silent laugh!
Dwight
I’d certainly recognise it, Dwight 🙂
This is wonderful writing and your last three lines are particularly stunning!
Thank you, Jo. I’m pleased you like it 🙂
Nice. They went to sleep, of course, by their fathers, and will awake in due time. We remember Jesus saying, the first shall be the last, and the last shall be the first. And there will be laughing, – and when finally St. Paul is reborn, he will laugh loudest of all, in pure joy of what have become!
💛
I think the essence of my ancestors will be wafting in the breeze over the Plain of Meath, the hills of Tipperary and the cliffs of Inishowen.
It is a long way to Tipperary, which is not far from Limerick, I now see. Inishowen, though, is on the edge of escaping. I made a lovely video, once, or rather a slide show, with photographs, to the song “The Voice” sung by Celtic Woman. I did not dare to keep it on YouTube. The material was all borrowed, without stated permission. Maybe now I should post it again.
You could try. If somebody objects, they’ll say so and You Tube will ask you to take it down.
Hi Jane
What a great poem. We make photo albums so I love it. Would you have a challenge if we had it on our blog? Kathy
As long as you give me the credit, no, I’d be pleased 🙂